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Rockopolis posted:Okay, I need some help. I would rent. No reason to make such a huge commitment at this point. At $16k per year and $12k in the bank you're not established enough financially to handle home ownership. You might be able to squeak by if there were never any major things that need fixing but that won't be the case - especially if you're limited to older homes.
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Jun 21, 2013 21:46
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Agreed. At first I read it and thought $16k is a really small salary, then I noticed you were in school. I would absolutely rent until after college regardless of the financials. Your degree could take you anywhere, and graduating at 28 would be a good time to experience some new things before settling down into fixed housing.
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Jun 21, 2013 22:07
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Definitely rent, the closing costs alone make buying a bad idea when you know you'll likely be gone in a couple of years.
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Jun 21, 2013 22:21
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I agree with the above posters. Assuming you can qualify for a mortgage (if you made 16k for the year, I doubt it) even with a cosigner (your parents have to be able to qualify too), it would not be a good financial decision. In the long run renting costs you more money depending on where you live and what your interest rate would be, but not even knowing if you can qualify for a mortgage, buying a house would be a moot point even if you could. life is killing me fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jun 21, 2013 |
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Jun 21, 2013 23:05
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Isn't the minimum time to make ownership worth it at least like 5 years, more in some places?
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Jun 21, 2013 23:07
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Baronjutter posted:Isn't the minimum time to make ownership worth it at least like 5 years, more in some places? Pretty much, it would take years just to get the mortgage paid down to such an amount that you could even sell without bringing money to the table, and longer to have any sufficient amount of equity.
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Jun 21, 2013 23:20
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Rent. After graduation is unpredictable.
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Jun 22, 2013 00:18
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My wife and I are currently in the process of buying our first house (in the UK). We've identified a property and put in an offer at the asking price of £190k, and have an agreement in principle for a mortgage with a 20% deposit. When we initially put in our asking price offer, we did so on the basis that the estate agent had told us the vendors were considering another bid that was at a relatively late stage in the buying process - specifically, they said that the prospective buyers had already commissioned a survey/inspection and that it was going to be conducted very shortly after our first viewing of the place. We liked the house a lot when we viewed it and so a week later, we made an offer at the asking price in the hope of outbidding the would-be buyers mentioned by the agent. We subsequently found out that the property had been on the market at its current price for around six months and are rather suspicious of the agent's behaviour: immediately after accepting our offer, they changed the listing on their website and the various property pages to "sold subject to contract", which it hadn't been when we were first looking or when they told us about the supposed earlier offer. This makes me think they just made up the earlier offer, especially since we're at a much earlier stage in the buying process than the supposed earlier bidders were. I'm rather annoyed about this, partly at myself for seemingly being played and partly because I'd prefer to spend as little money as I can.  As far as I can tell, the asking price isn't completely out of line for the area and size of the property, so I guess I can't feel too hard done by, but I'd still like to reduce our offer somehow if we're really the only serious bidders. I assume it'd be taken badly if we just did it without pretext, but would it be unreasonable of me to go in hard on any flaws identified in the survey in order to drive the price down?
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Jun 22, 2013 01:01
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Randomly posted:FHA purchase does 96.5% Conventional can actually do 97 on Fannie
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Jun 22, 2013 01:08
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Captain Windex posted:Conventional can actually do 97 on Fannie Oh yeah. Thanks for bringing that one up too. Point is that there are a ton of programs doing above 90% financing. If your lender isn't (or your company isn't), find another. Even with mortgage insurance, it can often make sense to refinance/buy. Several of those programs don't even have mortgage insurance so that makes it even more attractive.
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Jun 22, 2013 01:18
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LemonDrizzle posted:My wife and I are currently in the process of buying our first house (in the UK). We've identified a property and put in an offer at the asking price of £190k, and have an agreement in principle for a mortgage with a 20% deposit. When we initially put in our asking price offer, we did so on the basis that the estate agent had told us the vendors were considering another bid that was at a relatively late stage in the buying process - specifically, they said that the prospective buyers had already commissioned a survey/inspection and that it was going to be conducted very shortly after our first viewing of the place. We liked the house a lot when we viewed it and so a week later, we made an offer at the asking price in the hope of outbidding the would-be buyers mentioned by the agent. We subsequently found out that the property had been on the market at its current price for around six months and are rather suspicious of the agent's behaviour: immediately after accepting our offer, they changed the listing on their website and the various property pages to "sold subject to contract", which it hadn't been when we were first looking or when they told us about the supposed earlier offer. This makes me think they just made up the earlier offer, especially since we're at a much earlier stage in the buying process than the supposed earlier bidders were. I'm rather annoyed about this, partly at myself for seemingly being played and partly because I'd prefer to spend as little money as I can. In my few transactions as a buyer and some friends' experiences, the listing agent has breathlessly informed the buyer about another offer during negotiations. I chalk it up to a cheap shot meant to put you under time pressure and play on your emotional attachment. The first time I just took it in the shorts because I was young and stupid, offering asking price. The second time I increased our offer slightly and made it clear it was our best and final, and it was accepted. I guess what I'm saying is it's my opinion that these offers were probably not real, but there is no way to ever know. It all comes down to how much you want a particular house I guess. As far as reducing your offer goes, it probably depends on where exactly you are in the process, what is signed, and what you have paid for earnest money. I have no idea how it goes in the UK, but it sounds like you might be at the accepted signed offer, which would put maybe $1000 of yours at risk. You may have inspection clauses in your agreement that say something along the lines of "if items totaling more than $0 to fix are discovered, we the buyer can back out and get our money back." You may consider checking the agreement for language like that if you want to play hardball and call their bluff. I'm not a lawyer or solicitor or wizard or whatever you have over there, just someone who's been played as well before.
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Jun 22, 2013 03:03
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Zhentar posted:Do you understand how inflation works? I do! Do you think banks are losing or making money on the loans they offer? E: and one more question: would you recommend taking a mortgage over paying cash for a house, assuming the person has the cash? let it mellow fucked around with this message at 04:40 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 04:34
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jackyl posted:I do! Do you think banks are losing or making money on the loans they offer? As I understand it, the banks make money originating and packaging the loan and then sell the loan off to Fannie or Freddie. They're not usually the ones who service it during the whole duration of it.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:24
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jackyl posted:I do! Do you think banks are losing or making money on the loans they offer? Right now? Yes. I just did a super jumbo (2million+) loan for a high level finance VP for a major finance company. He had cash sitting in his account from the sale of his home and millions more in semi-liquid assets like stock. He took out a mortgage because he believed that after the tax break, his true cost of the loan was just at 2% a year. He believed that he could both beat that by investing it in the market and by general average inflation over the term. Basically, if he borrowed at 3.5% and earned 8% than he really earned 4.5%.... instead of paid. Also if he borrowed at 3.5% and inflation was 4% than he would be paying us back with dollars worth less than the ones he used.
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Jun 22, 2013 05:26
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Weinertron posted:As I understand it, the banks make money originating and packaging the loan and then sell the loan off to Fannie or Freddie. They're not usually the ones who service it during the whole duration of it. The loan gets sold to Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie/whoever, but the bank still retains the servicing rights or will sell it to another bank/servicer that then holds the servicing rights. The bank/servicer keeps a small portion of your monthly payment in return for handling the servicing of the loan, and sends the bulk of the payment onto the investor. It's a relatively low effort income stream as long as people make their payments on time since most of the work is just sending a monthly bill and handling the escrow account if applicable.
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Jun 22, 2013 06:37
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Robo-Pope posted:Yeah, 100% loans are exactly what caused the whole mortgage fiasco in the first place (and an incredibly dumb idea) so they are not allowed to do that anymore. You can occasionally get 95, but 90 is more likely. I don't think 100% loans is what caused your mortage issues, it was giving out easy loans to people who couldn't afford them and generally making a business out of giving loans to people with bad credit. I don't see the problem with a 100% loan when we've got stable employment and have people with sufficient credit standing in for us as security too. We have in general stricter rules on loans than americans anyway even before the mortage crisis, which wasn't really anything todo with our standards for loans back then.
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Jun 22, 2013 12:58
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Our sellers agreed to fix the major issues that turned up in inspection, and shaved several thousand off the price so we can address our other (non-safety/structural) concerns!  We accepted their counteroffer. In all the hubbub of trying to get a reply from the seller before option ended, we forgot to Damn Bananas fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 16:18
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drat Bananas posted:Our sellers agreed to fix the major issues that turned up in inspection, and shaved several thousand off the price so we can address our other (non-safety/structural) concerns! What's up, fellow DFW denizen? If they included a document retaining the rights, that's pretty much that. Either they are leasing them and thus lack the right to sell them with the property, or they own them and know exactly why they want to keep them. Either way, nothing you can do now. It depends on how concerned you are about the mineral rights, but if you REALLY wanted them you should have either made more of a deal out of it or terminated during your option when you found out you couldn't retain them. The listing (and subsequently the offer your realtor put together based off the listing) should have made it clear the minerals were excluded, otherwise the the sale of the mineral rights along with the property would have been implied. You need to keep bugging your realtor about a mineral lease because that could be why they are not selling them, but if the sellers are sitting on a black gold mine and they know it, it's possible that including them with the property at the current price (whatever it is) would be ripping themselves off. You should get that info if you can, but understand that many sellers have no idea if they even own the minerals or not. In this case it seems like these sellers do know, else they would not be including a document maintaining the rights. This IS Texas, after all. If you were selling your house and you knew you were sitting on tons of oil, would YOU sell the mineral rights if you knew you owned them? life is killing me fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Jun 22, 2013 |
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Jun 22, 2013 16:38
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life is killing me posted:What's up, fellow DFW denizen? Sup. I'm not really concerned about missing out on whatever lies below, I was mostly just wondering how this will affect us living there if at all. Will this affect my ability to dig a pool? Will O&G companies try to contact me? Do I have any sort of liability? Will people come put a rig in my back yard? Will fracking below me give me cancer? (clearly I'm getting more absurd, but I just have no idea what this means from a homeowner standpoint)
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Jun 22, 2013 17:20
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drat Bananas posted:Sup. I am a realtor but I'm not YOUR realtor...thus I don't know the situation or the property. Get your realtor to bug the listing agent until you get answers. Unless your backyard is big enough I doubt anyone is going to come and build a rig at any point, but they do have a right to do so. Oil is deep enough (as far as I know) that building a pool shouldn't affect it, and like I said above, unless you live in massive acreage, the owners of the rights on the property you are buying would also have to own the rights to the ten or twenty other congruent properties to effectively build a rig and store equipment there. There would be other laws governing this but I don't know what they are, and your realtor might advise you to contact a lawyer, us not being lawyers and all. As far as O&G companies, I think the viability of this is the same as a rig going into your backyard. For them to care about getting to oil I doubt they want to put as much effort in as it would take to drill in a residential neighborhood and get around ordinances and all the people complaining. That said I could be wrong about all of this, but as long as I've been licensed as a realtor in the state of Texas I have never heard of these things happening to people in residential neighborhoods, and you being in Dallas and, I'm assuming buying a house in Dallas, I'm not aware of tons of acreage out there like we have in Fort Worth where I can go buy like ten acres right now out in the middle of gently caress all nowhere.
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Jun 22, 2013 17:32
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It's not uncommon in Texas for "savvy" sellers to keep the mineral rights. The vast majority of the time, it amounts to nothing. I wouldn't worry about it if you're in a platted subdivision.
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Jun 22, 2013 20:54
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Dogen posted:It's not uncommon in Texas for "savvy" sellers to keep the mineral rights. The vast majority of the time, it amounts to nothing. I wouldn't worry about it if you're in a platted subdivision. This. Residential acreage is what you'd need to worry about.
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Jun 22, 2013 22:20
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I'm not a lawyer, but I work with mineral rights and leasing in the oil and gas industry, and I know quite a bit about title.drat Bananas posted:Our sellers agreed to fix the major issues that turned up in inspection, and shaved several thousand off the price so we can address our other (non-safety/structural) concerns! drat Bananas posted:[...] but my realtor asked about 3 times if there was a lease on the property and she was simply ignored each time. We are in the Dallas area and I guess there could be Barnett Shale under us. life is killing me posted:What's up, fellow DFW denizen? life is killing me posted:Either way, nothing you can do now. life is killing me posted:It depends on how concerned you are about the mineral rights, but if you REALLY wanted them you should have either made more of a deal out of it or terminated during your option when you found out you couldn't retain them. The listing (and subsequently the offer your realtor put together based off the listing) should have made it clear the minerals were excluded, otherwise the the sale of the mineral rights along with the property would have been implied. life is killing me posted:You need to keep bugging your realtor about a mineral lease because that could be why they are not selling them, but if the sellers are sitting on a black gold mine and they know it, it's possible that including them with the property at the current price (whatever it is) would be ripping themselves off. life is killing me posted:You should get that info if you can, but understand that many sellers have no idea if they even own the minerals or not. In this case it seems like these sellers do know, else they would not be including a document maintaining the rights. This IS Texas, after all. If you were selling your house and you knew you were sitting on tons of oil, would YOU sell the mineral rights if you knew you owned them? drat Bananas posted:Sup. life is killing me posted:I am a realtor but I'm not YOUR realtor...thus I don't know the situation or the property. Get your realtor to bug the listing agent until you get answers. Unless your backyard is big enough I doubt anyone is going to come and build a rig at any point, but they do have a right to do so. life is killing me posted:Oil is deep enough (as far as I know) that building a pool shouldn't affect it, and like I said above, unless you live in massive acreage, the owners of the rights on the property you are buying would also have to own the rights to the ten or twenty other congruent properties to effectively build a rig and store equipment there. There would be other laws governing this but I don't know what they are, and your realtor might advise you to contact a lawyer, us not being lawyers and all. life is killing me posted:As far as O&G companies, I think the viability of this is the same as a rig going into your backyard. For them to care about getting to oil I doubt they want to put as much effort in as it would take to drill in a residential neighborhood and get around ordinances and all the people complaining. Dogen posted:It's not uncommon in Texas for "savvy" sellers to keep the mineral rights. The vast majority of the time, it amounts to nothing. I wouldn't worry about it if you're in a platted subdivision.
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Jun 22, 2013 22:43
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jtsold posted:This is misguided. The fact that a mineral interest is leased doesn't prevent it from being sold. You can lease the minerals and then sell them, or include them with a sale of the land. What I meant in this case was if the sellers were leasing the mineral rights from the owner(s) of the mineral rights. In that case they couldn't convey them with the property as far as I know because they do not own them, unless I am misunderstanding what you're saying here. jtsold posted:Technically, that information doesn't necessarily belong in the listing--rather in the contract. If there's no provision in the contract that the sellers retain their mineral rights, then they are included in the sale. You're quite correct, however most agents will add this in NTREIS MLS so that prospective buyers and their agents viewing the listing will know up front, especially if the buyers have told the agent they want mineral rights when they buy a house. Not all agents will do this, though, so yes, we agree it must be stated in the contract that minerals are excluded. jtsold posted:Yes, but again, there's not "tons" of oil associated with such a small tract of land. (I assume this isn't a 40-acre ranch.) Indeed. My hypothetical was inaccurate. Hypothetically, it's true enough that this would only matter in a case of a huge amount of acreage. In Dallas, I doubt there's much unimproved acreage being sold, or even much to be found, so my point is probably moot anyhow. jtsold posted:It's true they do have the right to drill for their oil, and use your land to do it. In practice, though, there's no way they're going to use somebody's backyard to do so (unless it's a humungous tract of land), because it would be a logistical, environmental, regulatory, and PR nightmare. That was my point. jtsold posted:Unless you're planning on building a pool that's at least several thousand feet deep, I wouldn't worry about the oil rights interfering with your plans. However, 10 to 20 acres (of surface) required for an oil well is a huge overestimation. More like 1 or 2, for the wellsite and tanks, etc. Good point here, it doesn't take a lot of acreage, and my knowledge of the Dallas area is telling me not even the minimum space they'd need could be found there easily if O&G wanted to drill there. I could be wrong about this, though. Dallas is mostly older, more affluent neighborhoods and newer, hugely affluent neighborhoods with mcmansions all over the place. Closer to downtown it changes a bit. As an aside, I think had read somewhere that Dallas has the most expensive single-family residential listing in the country, but that might have changed. jtsold posted:Agree 100% with this, although I will point out that I've worked on projects where we leased subdivisions before, although they tend to be fairly rural (sub-suburbia). That happens quite a bit in Fort Worth, where there is more raw acreage to be found in spaced-out subdivisions in areas like Haslet, Azle, and county areas outside the city limits. I live in a more rural part of north Fort Worth near the lake, and I can remember at many points growing up where there were oil rigs all over the place, going up toward Newark and Rhome, one was basically across the street once, and there's a big cattle ranch not far from us with hundreds of acres (owner also owns a hardware store not far from here) where I remember seeing one or two rigs. The land across from us had a rig literally a half mile from my house a few years ago and that just sucked. But the nature of O&G means they (usually) come, set up, drill, and leave after a while. Thanks for adding some good points from the O&G perspective, never hurts for an agent to get a little more educated on matters like this!
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Jun 23, 2013 00:26
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I hope I didn't come across as completely disagreeing with you. On the whole, you were pretty much completely correct on all but a few points.life is killing me posted:What I meant in this case was if the sellers were leasing the mineral rights from the owner(s) of the mineral rights. In that case they couldn't convey them with the property as far as I know because they do not own them, unless I am misunderstanding what you're saying here. life is killing me posted:You're quite correct, however most agents will add this in NTREIS MLS so that prospective buyers and their agents viewing the listing will know up front, especially if the buyers have told the agent they want mineral rights when they buy a house. Not all agents will do this, though, so yes, we agree it must be stated in the contract that minerals are excluded. life is killing me posted:Good point here, it doesn't take a lot of acreage, and my knowledge of the Dallas area is telling me not even the minimum space they'd need could be found there easily if O&G wanted to drill there. I could be wrong about this, though. Dallas is mostly older, more affluent neighborhoods and newer, hugely affluent neighborhoods with mcmansions all over the place. Closer to downtown it changes a bit. As an aside, I think had read somewhere that Dallas has the most expensive single-family residential listing in the country, but that might have changed. life is killing me posted:Thanks for adding some good points from the O&G perspective, never hurts for an agent to get a little more educated on matters like this! drat Bananas, the message you should take home (ha!) is don't worry about it whatsoever. Good luck with your new home!
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Jun 23, 2013 01:30
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No worries, jtsold. You didn't come across that way. It was an educational post for me anyhow, and it's usually a reflex for me to clarify something I said when I think part of it is misunderstood or when I misunderstand something. Besides, if I am wrong about something, it's usually good for someone to tell me so when it pertains to my chosen profession!
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Jun 23, 2013 01:54
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jtsold posted:drat Bananas, the message you should take home (ha!) is don't worry about it whatsoever. Good luck with your new home! Thanks! I learned a whole friggen lot over these last several posts. You probably wouldn't have guessed based on my (lack of) knowledge that I worked at an O&G consulting company for over a year, huh? Collect production/lease data and put it in a database? Awesome. Legal ownership and rights? Actual size of a drill site? Buhh, nope. Oh and just for clarity, when I said Dallas I only meant to differentiate from, like, Seattle. The house is actually in north Euless, smack dab in the middle of a big neighborhood with no undeveloped land nearby. There's one "big" 2 acre house lot about 500 feet away, but otherwise very residential as far as the eye can see.
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Jun 23, 2013 03:24
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drat Bananas posted:Thanks! I learned a whole friggen lot over these last several posts. You probably wouldn't have guessed based on my (lack of) knowledge that I worked at an O&G consulting company for over a year, huh? Collect production/lease data and put it in a database? Awesome. Legal ownership and rights? Actual size of a drill site? Buhh, nope. Oh, I'm very familiar with Useless, Texas. I kind of feel sorry for you dealing with 121/183.
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Jun 23, 2013 03:38
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life is killing me posted:Oh, I'm very familiar with Useless, Texas. I kind of feel sorry for you dealing with 121/183. Hey! <  > We're actually happy to live near a boundary of Useless/Grapevine - Euless property taxes/home prices, Grapevine schools/restaurants/lake. We actually hardly ever travel far south enough to deal with any of the 183 mess, and Grapevine is freakin finally finishing up a lot of the 114 nightmare (which we use almost daily).
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Jun 23, 2013 04:53
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drat Bananas posted:Hey! < 183 isn't too bad, except for the part where no GPS will pick it up once 161 ends coming from Dallas. Most of my buyers don't want to look there if they know anything about Fort Worth, but if you're happy to be there then that is what counts! At least you are close to Grapevine, but nightmare is an understatement for 114. I went to meet a friend at Tinseltown one night to see a movie, and he was so frustrated trying to get there from McKinney (he pretty much couldn't, the signs for detours are misleading and most exits were blocked off) he sent me a text telling me to meet him at Grapevine Mills AMC that was laden with vulgarity. I met him there easily enough, but when I was trying to get back home (all the way to Eagle Mountain Lake), I could not find a way back to the highway that was not blocked off. There was literally no entrance without adding fifteen total minutes of travel time just to go around and get on a service road going past PF Changs for like four miles because it too lacked entrances to the freeway that weren't blocked off. Conclusion? They didn't plan that out.
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Jun 23, 2013 05:22
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I've got to say thanks to this thread for alerting me to the rapidly rising interest rates - we hassled the bank and they let us lock in the rate earlier than normal so we should be OK now. If I hadn't read this thread I wouldn't have realised until too late! Best $10 I ever blew on joining a pointless internet board.
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Jun 24, 2013 15:59
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Thank you very much for your advice. Okay, no more house buying plans, time to figure out if moving out is worth $500+ a month to me!
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Jun 24, 2013 18:35
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After signing a contract on new construction back in January, we have finally gotten a closing date from our builder - August 20th. During this time I have been watching mortgage interest rates steadily rise, and, wouldn't you know it, right as we're are getting ready to apply for a 60 day rate lock to finally end the uncertainty, Ben Bernanke sees his shadow during a press conference, the stock and bond markets go absolutely loving crazy, and mortgage rates skyrocket. What I don't get is why are bond prices tanking at the same time as stock prices? My understanding is that usually when the stock market tanks, most of the money flows into bonds, raising prices and lowering interest rates. Where is the money going? Well, at least we shouldn't have any trouble affording the payments even if rates go up to 5-6% or higher, but man do I hate not being able to lock in at the 3.25% rates I was getting quoted back in January when we signed the contract. Do never build.
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Jun 24, 2013 18:52
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NJ Deac posted:What I don't get is why are bond prices tanking at the same time as stock prices? My understanding is that usually when the stock market tanks, most of the money flows into bonds, raising prices and lowering interest rates. Where is the money going? The economist's favorite answer is: it depends. As far as bonds go, rates are different than yields. (Note that credit card companies like to advertise APR(rate), and banks like to advertise APY(yield) on savings accounts) I'm going to speak in oversimplified generalities here, so let's not sperg about the details. Let's say 6 months ago you could buy a bond at the market rate for a certain level of risk at 3%. Now, let's say for an identical level of risk, a comparable bond is issued with 4% interest rate today. When interest rates rise, prices on existing bonds are decreased. Why? Because someone can buy a new bond and get a 4% yield. No rational investor would buy someone's older 3% bond on the secondary market, unless the price is reduced to such a level where they'd get the same yield as a bond at the current, higher interest rate. So when interest rates overall rise, yields on newly issued bonds increase, which require the prices on the secondary market of older bonds at lower rates to decrease to match the yields. So, The Market (a collection of millions of dumb, panicky animals) sees that interest rates and bond yields are rising. Some of them will think "Gee, I wasn't willing to accept a piddly 2% return on bonds 6 months ago because I thought I could do better in stocks. Now that bond yields are higher, I'd like to reduce my risk exposure, and I'd rather sell off some stock [putting downward pressure on prices], and buy some bonds for a lower risk, predictable return." But, yeah, the bottom line is trying to "time" the market or predict the future is a fool's errand. The one safe thing to say is that interest rates literally couldn't get any lower for some periods in the last few years. So you'll expect some uptick.
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Jun 25, 2013 01:00
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canyoneer posted:The economist's favorite answer is: it depends. So in the instant case, the drop in the stock market is the result of the market responding to increased interest rates (investors selling to move their money to take advantage of newly desirable bonds)? If investors are selling their stocks so they can buy bonds though, shouldn't that still result in a decreased yield, due to increased demand for bonds? I get the relationship between bond prices and yields, it just seems backwards in this particular case because if investors are selling their stocks to buy bonds, bond prices should be rising and interest rates dropping as a result. Instead, we're getting a drop in the stock market and an big interest rate hike. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I don't understand the full picture. Either way, we're going to go for a 60 day lock this week with some kind of a one time float down provision - I certainly don't think I can predict the market, but that doesn't mean I can't bitch about interest rates going up right before my loan is ready.
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Jun 25, 2013 01:22
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Yeah. Everyone is entitled to bitch about rising rates. My income is tied to the rates so every 1/8th of a point that it goes up means fewer people buy or refinance so I make less. Bitch away, you are in good company.
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Jun 25, 2013 03:07
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My wife and I have decided to hold off on purchasing a home till the rates stabilize(and hopefully drop back down...). A nearly 1 point increase in the span of 2 weeks seems like a bubble that is destined to burst(god I hope so!)
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Jun 25, 2013 15:20
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Anyone else ever bought something from a clueless FSBO seller? I could use some help navigating this situation. Found a FSBO on craigslist a few weeks ago and these sellers have been stupid hard to work with. They are in their 50s, getting divorced and need to sell quick. They do not want to involve a realtor to save money. Three weeks ago we made an offer they accepted. It was well below asking, but the house needs some cosmetic work which we agreed to do if they'd accept the lower price. They accepted our offer, but when they got the contract they decided to counter.  We agreed to the new, slightly higher price. I dropped the draft of the contract off at the house yesterday and I'm waiting to hear back. I'm having to explain everything to the sellers; how closing works, why they have to buy the title insurance, etc. Seller calls me two days ago and asked to stay in the house, rent free, for at least 30 days after closing. I told them my lawyer advised against it, they told me we could just do it "under the table". I told them absolutely not and they would have to be out the day before closing for a final inspection. I'm standing firm on that, I don't plan on getting into a landlord situation with these people at all. All this in just the three weeks since I found the place. It's an amazing deal though, about $30,000 under market, built in 2005, great house. My wife and I can fix the cosmetic stuff easy. We've got a good contract detailing what we expect from the sellers and gives us plenty of opportunities to walk away, such as if the house doesn't appraise where we need it to or if the home inspection comes back bad. Are there any other things I should look out for? I genuinely don't think these people are doing this to screw us or be hard-asses about it, they just don't know any better. Bird Law fucked around with this message at 16:12 on Jun 25, 2013 |
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Jun 25, 2013 16:07
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Looking for a bit of advice. I'm a first time buyer starting the process. We're looking for a starter home and looked at a few open houses last weekend by ourselves just to get an idea of our ideal neighborhood and what an open house is like. Does the agent matching service in the OP still exist? I'm trying to get sources for buyers agents for Montgomery County, MD together. I was originally planning to wait to start looking at houses until the fall, but interest rates ticking up is making me think I should at least find an agent sooner. What should we be concerned with when looking at older homes, mostly 1950s but probably between 1940-1960? That's what we're looking at for single family homes in our preferred areas. I quickly realized that it's a lot less space than I grew up with. Two of the homes were pretty much our current 1BR apartment with two extra bedrooms. Living room, dining area, and kitchen were exactly the same size. One house we looked at was really nice, in a great spot, but had not been kept up. It was also about $100k cheaper than more move-in ready homes. The basement was unfinished and had cracks where water had come through from light rain in the morning, to the point that the agent warned us that it was a wet basement. Is this general "run away" situation? HGTV shows make that look like a ton of work and cost. It also didn't have central A/C, so that comes across as a major cost or we have to just deal with window units. There were cracks in the paint, a bit of a mildewey smell (maybe the carpet, maybe mold?) which may have just been because everything was super old. It even had the original bathroom and kitchen, but we like that style so it was a plus. Ultimately, it seemed like we could easily run into problems that would more than eat up the $100k cost difference. First home we saw was great but small, but with a pool. Exchange that for a basement and I probably would have been in love with it. The open house process definitely made me want to be more on guard for love at first sight.
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Jun 25, 2013 17:06
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| # ? May 15, 2024 15:37 |
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A couple of things we saw with older homes: (We are set to close on a first home next week!) lovely additions - "I quickly realized that it's a lot less space than I grew up with." This is common, so a lot of the Phoenix homes we looked at had additions to increase square footage. Out of 8 '50-'60s homes we walked through with additions not one was done to my standards (Poor AC, poor foundation, etc) Cracks leading up to walls (and foundation possibly) Wiring for things like cable run through the ceiling and just down through closets in shoddy ways Door frames being oddly settled, gaps in door seals In-ground pools needing refinishing Every house seemed to have minor issues with electrical since code standards have been updated We saw quite a few porch/patio overhangs that needed to be re-joisted and better secured. Old window frames that may be drafty or in need of replacement. Poor spacing of electrical/cable outlets based on your intended room usage
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Jun 25, 2013 18:05
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